Hell is no Place for Love
by Sarah1281
Summary: "I've wanted this since Toulon." The moment he said that, Javert knew that he had stuck his foot in his mouth but he couldn't just un-say it. Now Valjean was looking at him in horror and it was really ruining the mood. If only Javert had any faith at all in his comforting skills.


Hell is no Place for Love

"I've wanted this since Toulon."

It was one of those moment where thinking was impossible and he could not control what he said. He was not the best at reigning in his tongue in the best of times and this was rapidly becoming less and less like the best of times.

Valjean pulled back and stared at him, his face a mixture of confused hurt and anger. "What did you say?"

"I…" Javert began but trailed off. If he had wanted to tell Valjean that then he would have mentioned it sometime before now.

Valjean was looking at him as if he had just threatened to tell Cosette that he had once been a convict (well, before Marius had blabbed that in his excitement about finding out Valjean saved his life) and was putting as much distance between them as he could and still have the two of them remain on the same bed.

That was ridiculous and Javert reached for him. "Valjean."

Valjean scooted back again and risked falling off the bed.

Javert reluctantly moved backwards as well if only to avoid sending Valjean crashing to the floor.

"You wanted that ever since Toulon," Valjean repeated, looking inexplicably betrayed.

Javert said nothing, trying to understand.

"_Javert_."

"I did, yes," Javert admitted. He wondered what Valjean would do next. Could he ask him about it safely or would that send Valjean fleeing into the night? Right now he honestly wasn't sure.

"How could you?" Valjean demanded, horrified.

"Valjean," Javert said, as calmly as he could. "I am trying to understand. What was wrong with what I said? Why is it a problem how long I wanted you?"

"It was _Toulon_," Valjean said as if that explained everything. It didn't, of course.

Javert thought quickly. "Is it because of how much power I had over you and what I could have gotten away with doing? You know that nothing happened and that I would never."

Valjean shook his head impatiently. "It's not that."

Javert narrowed his eyes. "Then you're just going to have to tell me and you're going to have to do better than just repeating 'it was Toulon' because I'm pretty sure that I realized that by myself some time ago."

In response, Valjean closed his eyes and his lips started to move but no sound came out of them. Javert was hardly an expert on lip-reading but he saw enough to understand that Valjean was silently praying. Praying for what?

"Valjean," Javert growled.

Abruptly Valjean's eyes opened. "How could you have possibly wanted this, any of this, back then?"

Javert turned his attention to the ceiling. "I did not want nearly all of this back then. My desires were a lot less…" He trailed off, searching for a word. Unfortunately, he could only think of the one. "Loving than they are now."

Valjean's gaze hadn't softened the way it usually did whenever he said something like that and that was not a good sign.

Javert sighed again. "I'm sorry, Valjean, but I just don't understand why you are reacting this way. You're going to have to explain it or we will be here all night."

"This is…" Valjean trailed off and gestured vaguely. "This is good. It took us a long time to come to this place but now we have and it is good. We love each other and we are, strangely enough, happy. And I got to keep Cosette even after having lost her to Marius. Things are good."

It was on the tip of Javert's tongue to ask why any of that was causing Valjean to react like that but it probably wouldn't help and Valjean did not seem eager to speak of this anyway so it was really best to just let him finish and not give him any distraction.

"The life we have now is about as far from Toulon as it is possible to get," Valjean continued. "I don't want to bring that here."

Javert frowned. "Do you just want us to never speak of Toulon?"

It wasn't as if they spoke of it all the time but it did come up occasionally after that first halted and stilting conversation on the matter proved so awkward that Javert was seriously tempted to throw himself back into the Seine to escape it. Usually Valjean was the one to bring it up, as well, which was odd because he had had, by far, the worst experience there. Sometimes Javert thought he couldn't help it, though. With so long of not being able to speak about Toulon to anyone and then suddenly Javert was there to listen and not to condemn too much.

But Marius had admitted that Valjean had gone off on random rants about prison life a few times following his wedding so perhaps it really was just that Valjean couldn't help but talk about it. And it was such a dreadful thing that really the only two options were needing to talk about it with a fervor that could border on obsession or never speaking of it, he supposed.

Did Valjean want to change that? When had Javert ever even brought it up? He still found the situation of a police inspector being involved with a fugitive far more awkward than Valjean seemed to.

Valjean shook his head. "No, I believe that it is healthy to not just pretend that the past is not real when we do not have to."

"Then what _is _it?" Javert asked again, doing his best to keep the frustration from his voice.

"I do not remember you from Toulon," Valjean declared.

"Oh?" Javert asked, not surprised.

There had been many guards in Toulon during the nineteen years that Valjean had served there and Javert had been there pretty early into his sentence. He had been a good guard, he thought, but not particularly memorable. He himself had only remembered Valjean and managed to become reluctantly attracted because of his inhuman strength and his surprising act of heroism in holding that caryatid up for ages until a jack could be found and saving the people it would have otherwise crushed.

Javert had felt at the time that that was because Valjean was worried he would be punished if he had done nothing when he could have prevented a senseless tragedy. Everyone knew he was strong but he thought that only Valjean had realized that he was _that _strong. Nowadays he did mostly still think that given what Valjean would freely admit to having once been (not that Valjean was ever a good judge of his own morality and worth) but for Valjean to have become such a good man after having been so long in Toulon he must have always had something good inside of him. Maybe he was a proper convict then with hatred in his eyes and his heart but perhaps that didn't go so far as to not caring if people died.

The Valjean of today would have heedlessly thrown himself into the danger of the caryatid without any proof that he could lift it. The Valjean of Montreuil had knowingly condemned himself back to prison to lift a cart and saving those men had cost far less.

But why should whether they knew each other or not matter? Shouldn't the fact that Valjean only vaguely knew him as a guard and did not have any memories of Javert serving that role make things easier for him?

Valjean shook his head. "No, when you first arrived in Montreuil and first began to investigate me I asked, of course, but even after I knew I couldn't recognize you."

Javert waited as patiently as he could for Valjean to get on with it. He had rather hoped to be engaged in other activities by this point but there was no chance of that until he got this sorted. And even without that, he didn't relish the thought of Valjean upset with him.

"I was not the man that I am today in Toulon," Valjean began before stopping and smiling grimly. "That sounds like the sort of thing that I might tell Marius and Cosette so that they will not have any understanding of nineteen years of Toulon really means. They cannot ever really _know _of course but I do not want them to be horrified nonetheless. They would never believe me anyway if I tried to tell them."

Javert could not blame them. He still found it difficult to believe sometimes that the man who cared so much for others but sometimes needed to be literally forced to be happy was once a man who was very likely just like all the other prisoners at Toulon and he had actually seen it! For Marius and Cosette just hearing about it, and knowing Valjean's tendency to accentuate the negative when it came to himself, it would be outright impossible.

"But _you_," Valjean continued, shaking his head. "You know. And you would still say that."

Javert nodded. "Yes you were a convict like any other but why should that mean that-"

"I was at my worst self then," Valjean interrupted. "I was lower than I have ever been. Any evil that I have ever been capable of, I was capable of there. You _know _what I did before being saved by the bishop. After being saved by him even! And you claim you still were attracted then?"

It was a little strange, to be sure, and Javert had often wondered at it. He did not like Valjean's personality (the little of it he had observed) and Valjean had been extremely wretched the entire time he had known him in Toulon. He was not clean, he had an unruly beard, his hair was never cut properly, and he wore the same decrepit rags all the time. What was it about him?

The strength, Javert decided, it was definitely the strength. And after he started paying attention there was something strangely compelling about him but damned if Javert could explain it.

"It was just attraction," Javert said. "It's not like I'm pretending that any of that wasn't true."

"There was _nothing _to be attracted to then!" Valjean insisted.

Javert did not think bringing up the strength issue would help the situation. It might even make Valjean uncomfortable with Javert's enjoyment of that in the future and that would certainly be a problem.

Valjean bowed his head. "I was what they had made me but I must also take responsibility for my own soul. Whatever had been done to me, I still had a responsibility there that I have spent many years attending to. You say that you saw something. You could not have. There was nothing to see. Sometimes I wonder if there was anything at all truly worthwhile before Cosette came along or if it was all just a clumsy attempt to atone."

Javert really had just meant, in as much as he had meant to say it at all, for that to have been a passing comment to be noted and moved on from. If Valjean had said the same to him then (after taking a moment to adjust to the fact that he was desired after by at least convict and wondering if there had been more) he might have been pleased by the long-standing interest of his partner.

But Javert, despite the new ideas he has come to accept, had no real problem with who he was back then. Valjean had enough problems with who he was for ten men.

"I didn't mean…" Javert sighed. "You cannot help who you are drawn to, Valjean. If you could, would either of us have ended up here? Or would Marius have persisted in chasing after Cosette despite the very little hope he had of even seeing her again and not knowing her name?"

"I do not think that we are so badly matched," Valjean replied, momentarily distracted. "You are the only one that I could ever be with as you are the only one who knows my past and accepts it outside of my children. I could never be with someone who did not know and I could never run the risk of telling them or burden them with that knowledge. And the two of us, I believe, help each other heal."

Javert rolled his eyes. "That's very nice but that's just a happy coincidence and not the reason we were attracted to each other. What makes you think that I could help being attracted to you in Toulon?"

"Even if you could not help it, there must be a reason," Valjean said, the anger having faded for the most part but plenty of bewilderment remained.

"Sometimes things just are, Valjean, and we can't explain it," Javert said, shrugging. "I should think that this would be a good sign for you."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't like convicts," Javert said bluntly. "I do not like anything about them. I like you a great deal."

"I am no longer much at all like a convict," Valjean replied.

"And yet I liked you then, at least to an extent," Javert said. "What does that mean?"

"I don't _know_," Valjean said, frustrated.

"To me it means that, while you were certainly not a good man, there must have been something still there that I saw but did not understand that allowed me to be drawn to you anyway," Javert reasoned.

Valjean shook his head helplessly.

Javert dared to move a little closer and Valjean did not move away. "What is it that you are always telling me, Valjean? That which was made good by God cannot be made wholly evil by man? What makes you think you're any different? That's almost arrogant."

Valjean smiled faintly. "Arrogant."

"Yes," Javert said stubbornly, well-aware that that was not a very apt word choice to describe Valjean.

"I do not know if I believe you," Valjean admitted. "You are right, of course, about God and man but somehow…I _remember_ those years. I cannot remember anything good."

"Nineteen years is a long time and your decision to change had to have come from somewhere," Javert said quietly.

Valjean nodded vaguely, still unconvinced but perhaps moved enough that he no longer felt he had to argue about it.

"It was not love, in Toulon," Valjean said, his tone making it almost a question.

Javert snorted. "How could it be? It was Toulon."

"Toulon is no place for love," Valjean agreed, nodding. "But here…we are a long way from Toulon."

Javert thought he knew where this was going. Or he hoped, at any rate.

"We have found love against all odds and that is a blessed thing," Valjean continued. There was a smile on his face and an invitation in his eyes. "It is only proper that we celebrate it."

Never let it be said that Javert was so rude as to refuse an invitation.


End file.
